


Can I Forgive Me

by BaggerHeda



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11740164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaggerHeda/pseuds/BaggerHeda
Summary: The slowest forgiveness to come may just be from her own self.Events of episodes 2x08, 2x09Chapter 1: NicoleChapter 2: Waverly





	1. Nicole

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: Hello, welcome to the angst party. I just got here myself, would you like to sit down? I am having quite a lot of feels.
> 
> I originally wrote this as a single chapter, added the second a few days later. I am trying to feel my way to what the inner monologue would be for our beloved couple.

Nicole burns with shame. How could she let herself do something like that? She’s someone who has always considered herself a good person – a moral person – whatever that means. Not because she’ll have to confess her misdeeds to a prosecutor or a priest or something. It’s because it’s just WHO SHE IS. It’s how she’s built. How she was brought up.

“Do right, not because someone is watching, but because it is right.” Who said that? Nicole can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter. Still a damn fine watchword.

Nothing had ever, ever caused her to doubt this belief in herself.

Until a white envelope with Waverly’s name on it, with a return address from a commercial laboratory two provinces away, hit her desk along with the rest of the day’s mail.

Things went so wrong after that.

***

She remembered sitting in Waverly’s room, the two of them peering at Willa’s old journal, Waverly speaking her fear and confusion and sadness in halting tones. She would have given anything to soothe her right then. She told her she couldn’t possibly be anything but an Earp, brought her forms and applications to help her prove it to herself. But Waverly was hiding secrets, secrets that Nicole couldn’t begin to fathom, but they were there and she could just start to sense them. The doubts that ranged so freely in Waverly were planted in Nicole’s mind as well, the last place that they should have been able to take root.

***

She’d taken that official-looking envelope and thrown it in her desk drawer, slammed it shut loudly. In hindsight, she knew the emotion she’d felt was panic. She’d panicked, and she’d done a stupid thing.

When the choice had been between ‘right thing’ and ‘might hurt Waverly’ – she’d chosen. Without hesitation. She didn’t do the right thing after all.

It did not take long for the chorus of ‘what the fuck am I doing’ to rise to cacophonous levels in her head.

So she slid the envelope into her bag when she left the station, carrying her mistake with her, trying to temporarily ignore the weightless paper and its leaden burden on her emotions.

She’d set the envelope on her kitchen counter, the thing sending a trill of dread through her bones. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Was. She. Doing. She’d eye it, walk away, return.

This could be very, very bad. But maybe it could still be okay.

She followed her first mistake with a second, larger one, so huge that she thinks she will be kicking herself for it from now until the end of her days. She opened her pocketknife and slid it through that pristine white envelope and pulled out the paper it held inside.

Nicole doesn’t know much about the methodology used for determination of paternity. She doesn’t much care. They covered DNA evidence at the academy, some, but more from the angle of how to collect and when to collect and how to properly preserve the chain of evidence. The individual ident info was largely masked, anyway, but Nicole assumed Waverly talked Wynonna into providing the comparison sample, because who else would there be? So. Her eyes skipped right over sections about unavailability of direct sample of alleged paternal DNA, and probabilistic calculations, and alleles, and all the rest. They settled on a single word: Inconclusive.

It hurt. God, did it hurt. Because she knew that was the only word that Waverly would see as well. And that Waverly would know she had seen it first.

There it was. With slow-dawning horror she realized the magnitude of what she had done: broken trust with her girlfriend, violated awfully serious law, and ROYALLY FUCKED UP the most precious thing in her life.

How was she going to make this right?

It was only hours later, spinning in her misery and many fingers into a bottle of bourbon, that Nicole let herself curl up on her sofa and sob and sob and sob.

The impromptu baby shower was when the disaster went careening out of control. Because of course it did. Every cop, even a rookie one, knows that few people bear up well, or long, when they are burdened with guilt. And, oh Lord, was Nicole burdened. So she’d carried that terrible envelope with her, not even hidden away. She’d wanted to pull Waverly away for a conversation in private, then felt reluctant to do so because it would mean she’d be taking two-thirds of the party attendees away from the sad little fête, then cursed herself as a chickenshit for not doing so, then simmered while Rosita and Waverly giggled and drank and she sat there like the doesn’t-belong-in-Purgatory outsider and she thought she was PAST all this. The whole time, that goddamn fucking envelope was sitting there like a radioactive time bomb just waiting to be found. And Waverly found it. Of course.

They’d exchanged barely any words since then. Nicole could think of none that weren’t hurtful.

***

Nicole didn’t know how else to ask for Waverly’s forgiveness. But she asked, and she asked, and she asked.

She couldn’t do otherwise. It was how she was built. It was how she was brought up.

She was a Haught, by God, and she had her pride, but most of all she had her honour.

She had done wrong by the woman she loved; now she would offer her apologies, do whatever was required of her for restitution. Anything. And maybe then she could begin the long journey of forgiving herself. Because that might just be the very hardest thing. The slowest forgiveness to come may just be from her own self.

***

It was agonizing days later that Nicole received the first tiny glimpse of a thaw. After countless voicemails and ‘can we please talk’ texts, Waverly had texted her back.

_yeah let’s talk_

When a knock came on her door later that morning, Nicole felt hope bloom in her chest, like the smallest spark impossibly hot and bright, for the first time in what felt like forever. Struggling to keep her swimming emotions in check, she went to the door.

“Waves?”


	2. Waverly

Waverly’s head spins. Not in a good, giggling, happy-fun-times way, in a horrible, frustrating, grind-your-teeth way. In a way that just makes her madder. In a way that makes her want to do _anything_ to avoid these thoughts that will NOT stop trampling through her brain like a panicky herd of beeves, large and unpredictable and implacable. And she _really_ hates where this stampede is leading her.

In so many ways it was easier to just be mad. To be fuming and furious and convinced she was in the right.

(you are a grown-ass adult now, she admonishes herself harshly, so act like it goddammit)

Because the thing is, mad felt good. Mad felt justified. Mad was burning bright with righteousness when it was someone else who did or said a thing.

She didn’t have a whole lot of experience with mad.

Instead, she had always been the sunny sweetheart of this shitty little burg with a great view of the Rockies. Always a smile and a kind word, liked by everybody. It was a role she took on so completely, so unconsciously, that she was as unaware of it as a fish is of water. It was just WHO SHE WAS. If she wanted to be smiling and happy and never look at her own gathering mess of hurt and rage, carefully curated over the years with every whisper or frowning glance by the townspeople, well, whose business was that but hers? Acquiescence seemed like a fine choice.

Things started to go wrong a few months back.

***

Wynonna had walked back into Purgatory on her twenty-seventh birthday, her mouth claiming she wasn’t here for her inheritance and everything else putting the lie to that. Waverly knew, knew to the marrow of her bones, everything had shifted in an instant. And when she’d first seen those red eyes and the glowing brand - in that moment, the terror she’d felt dangling at the end of a rope couldn’t override the fierce vindication that she’d been RIGHT. Her research had been right all along.

The thing she never would have anticipated in a million zillion years … was Nicole. Sweet, perfect Nicole. Who had strode into the bar with a sweet smile and unexpected, unlooked-for possibilities and had somehow become the calm steady center of her life. All gentle eyes and chivalry and sureness. That’s why her betrayal had cut so deep.

(uh oh here comes the anger again)

She didn’t know how to be mad, had no practice at it, so when it happened it frightened her. And when she’d discovered those lab results, the ones that Nicole had kept in her own hands against all reason, she’d flashed over to white-hot fury and hadn’t ever wanted to let go of it. Because it hurt. God did it hurt. It hurt worse than a lonely childhood she’d salved by becoming the one everybody liked. Worse than the return of Willa, idolized awful eldest sister, full of casual cruelty and judgement, bringing destruction. Worse than the terrible whispers Bobo had set in her ear – well, maybe not worse than that, or maybe it was, the pain coming from a quarter she never expected. Waverly didn’t know what to think any more, and if there was one thing in this world she hated more than being mad, Waverly hated being uncertain.

Waverly had steeled herself to read those results, alone and tiny. She told herself she knew what the envelope was going to contain. She sobbed anyway. After, she’d set out to drink.

That’s when things got really weird. (Weirder than normal-weird, anyway.)

Rosita, being an unexpectedly cool friend, offered up a spa gift card as a get-the-fuck-out-of-here option, and soon it was hot tubs and champagne, which didn’t make Waverly forget the anger but did mute the roar a little. The champagne also pricked a memory to the surface – Nicole, in the purple dress, at the Solstice party where everyone drank and went insane – then Willa, with her gun, and pleading with Wynonna, and Nicole crashing to the floor …

(no no no don’t thing about that, push that down and hang on the anger a little longer)

Her anger, warm and sharp and bitter, was made easier to hang onto when she saw Nicole’s texts coming in, begging forgiveness when she wasn’t ready to forgive.

Rosita said “backbone.” So she’d snatched up her phone and tapped out the meanest reply she could think of. She didn’t want the wound to be a shallow one.

She knew it to be a horrible mistake as soon as she sent it, even without seeing that look on Rosita’s face. Oh, no. Just like every other fucking thing in her life she’d wrecked this too. Suddenly she was thrust back into childhood, surrounded by nothing but disapproval and indifference. But Rosita was still talking, about how perfect isn’t required, or maybe not even a thing, talking about bubbles and nucleation, and to Waverly it felt like a lifeline.

She followed her first mistake with a second, larger one, so huge she almost cannot believe it happened. She’d leaned in and kissed Rosita, tentative, full on the lips. Just once. Not a short kiss.

She drew back quickly, eyes going wide with shock at just how loudly her brain was yelling ‘NO’ and ‘what the fuck am I doing.’ Delete. Delete. Undo. Undo. But no hotkey was going to erase this. As Rosita quickly rose and escaped to the changing room, Waverly sat stunned for a moment, then followed, as sorry as any one person could be. She needed to apologize to Rosita, and hope she hadn’t killed this nascent friendship with foolishness. And she needed to, somehow, begin talking to Nicole again. She was still angry but she couldn’t live in this anger, not forever. She had no idea how to move forward, and it scared her to death.

That’s when things got even weirder.

Rosita, lying dead. Tucker there, claiming her. Desperately trying to think her way out of the trap. And then Rosita, impossibly, alive and smashing Tucker over the head with a bottle.

Then Rosita’s eyes glowing, hellfire-red.

They’d beat a hasty retreat back to Purgatory, ending up at Shorty’s after hours with Waverly tossing back booze trying to hush her chattering brain, overwhelmed with too much happening, too quickly. She got drunk enough to crash on Rosita’s small sofa without much complaint. Rosita threw blankets over her and only had to tell her four times to shut the hell up and stop apologizing before she was snoring.

***

In the morning, Waverly sat at the bar, contemplating her options along with a little hair of the dog. So many things rocketed around in her head, she didn’t know where to start with her thoughts, everything was separate but everything was connected and she couldn’t see how. Rosita spoke to her calmly, kindly even, bringing her back to the important thing that had never really left her mind at all – Nicole.

Oh god, Nicole. That text.

Waverly knew she had to be the one to reach out now, start the conversation. She had no idea how the conversation was going to go, and that was completely frightening in itself. She would make that leap nonetheless. She stared at her phone in contemplation, then tapped out a quick text:

_yeah let’s talk_

**Author's Note:**

> I love these characters so much.  
> Like much of fandom, 2x08 and 2x09 have been quite difficult for me. We will get through to the other side, my darlings - it's longer-form storytelling and we are in the intense heart of it now. Hang on and put your faith in love.


End file.
